Kickoff

So the weather is acting up. Cooler air is moving in and it is really feeling like Fall. Highs in the 70's in mid August? Yep. Fall.

In the Fall Georgia boys learn about life on the gridiron

Local high school teams are starting their scrimmages tonight, I'm getting updates from the SEC and my own Jacksonville State about counting down the days to kickoff, my baby brother has been working through a training camp internship with the World Champion Baltimore Ravens and even my own son has been busy getting the new season started.

Happy days are here again.

Ok, so a lot of folks might wonder just how a bookworm such as myself came to value the glorious combat of the gridiron so dearly. The sport has made its enemies over the years. So much of academia hates the attention and the amount of money that goes into this sport and the often unfair emphasis that is placed on it. I understand. And I feel that there are many times that the sport is abused.

But let me tell you how this can go right.

In the late fall of 1992 I walked off a football field as a player for the last time. My head hurt as bad as it ever has. I was tired and somewhat sad considering the game had not gone very well for my team. A good friend walked with me to the locker room and spoke encouraging words to me - not goofy cliches but stuff that really mattered and meant something. It was real.

I've never since needed any of the fundamentals that the coaches taught me. My career path went way different than originally expected and I never truly coached a down of football. While I can still remember all my hand signals and assignments, I've never needed that information.

But I've used what I learned from my coaches every day of my life. On my job, in my marriage, raising my boys - because I learned much more than fundamentals of a sport. I leaned abut setting goals and working toward them. I learned about working in the context of a team and putting the teams goals before my own. I learned about not making decisions that will let your teammates down. I learned about picking up a down teammate - about understanding and being understood. I leaned about working hard, even when...no especially when you don't feel like it. I leaned about consequences and rewards, about being a leader and a follower.

And so much more.

You don't think about those things on game day. They don't always talk about it in the pregame show. Football players are often thought of as dumb jocks, barbaric Neanderthals roaming the earth looking to break things and avoid education. And sometimes that's accurate. And not every player is as blessed as I was to play for excellent coaches in high school and then work for excellent coaches in college - men that taught me much more about the world than they did about football.

This is why I get excited about football. (Well, that and watching Jadeveon Clowney knocking a Michigan football helmet from Tampa to St. Pertersburg.) I want my son to have the chance to learn the things that I learned. It is good to see other boys being mentored and taught. There is a serious educational factor to the game and in that area boys become men, not because they can violently separate less capable players from their equipment (although this is interesting and does help) but because of the lessons learned and the experiences gained.

And then there's the tradition. Mascots, fight songs, rituals of one form or another, storied rivalries. The attachments caused by these traditions somehow connect the game to our soul. When you hear a slogan, a chant or that one tune, you attention is caught and you are trapped in its influence. And that is why, to this day, every hair on my body stands on end - each one hoisted on high by its very own goose bump any time the Jacksonville State Marching Southerners play Salvation. Knowing those guys are hitting the "WIN" sign on the way out to the field stirs emotions even more.

Yes. Yes I am ready for some football.